Passé composé vs imparfait: how French picks its past

The short answer

If you are coming from English, the confusing part is that English hides this choice. “I ate” is one form; French makes you decide whether you mean je mangeais (I was eating, I used to eat) or j’ai mangé (I ate, and that is the event). Once you hear the two questions, the tenses stop looking like a list of exceptions and start looking like what they are: two camera angles on the same past.

Before the grammar, here is what the language sounds like from a native speaker:

Each card below is a French sentence with one verb missing. Type it, reveal the answer, and read what every word in the sentence is doing.

Building block 1: the passé composé with avoir

The passé composé is two words: a helper verb in the present, usually avoir, plus the past participle. Il a fait, he made; tu as fini, you finished. The helper carries the person (a, as, avons, ont), the participle carries the meaning.

Two more, because the participle is where most of the memorising lives. Lire gives lu, voir gives vu, and small words like déjà, already, slip in between the helper and the participle:

Building block 2: être or avoir?

A short list of verbs, mostly about coming, going and changing state, take être as their helper instead of avoir: elle est allée, she went, not “elle a allé”. Every reflexive verb takes être too: ils se sont levés, they got up.

Here is the detail that separates a memorised list from an understood one. A handful of verbs, sortir, monter, descendre, passer, switch helpers depending on whether they have an object. Same verb, same participle, two sentences:

The same thing happens with monter: carry the suitcases up, nous avons monté les valises, but go upstairs, nous sommes montés.

Building block 3: making the participle agree

With être, the participle behaves like an adjective and agrees with the subject: elles sont parties, with the feminine plural ending -es. With avoir, it usually does not agree at all, with one famous exception: when the thing acted on comes before the verb, as in les pommes que Paul a mangées, the apples that Paul ate.

Reflexives look like they should always agree, since they take être, but they follow the avoir rule underneath: agreement only when the se is the thing acted on. Elles se sont lavées, they washed themselves, agrees. Ils se sont parlé, they spoke to each other, does not, because you speak to someone.

You will not hear most of these endings, since parti and parties sound the same. They matter in writing, and they are what the cards ask you for.

Building block 4: the imparfait

The imparfait is one word and almost perfectly regular. Take the nous form of the present, drop -ons, add -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. Nous finissons gives the stem finiss-, so nous finissions, we used to finish. Only être refuses the pattern, with the stem ét-.

Verbs in -cer and -ger keep their soft sound with a spelling tweak: commencer becomes commençaient, manger becomes mangeait.

The choice itself

Now the part the whole page is named after. With both tenses in hand, most sentences fall into one of three shapes.

The interruption. Something was going on (imparfait), and something else happened (passé composé). This is the shape every French course drills, because it puts both tenses in one sentence and shows exactly how they divide the work.

Je regardais is the film playing in the background; a sonné is the ring that cuts in. Flip the tenses and the sentence goes strange: “I watched a film when the phone was ringing” makes the ringing the backdrop for a whole film.

The weather is the classic scene-setter. Il faisait beau is not an event, it is the conditions; nous sommes partis is what occurred inside them.

The plan that fell through. The imparfait can hold an expectation, and the passé composé what actually took place.

Il devait venir, he was supposed to come, is a state of expectation; il a eu un empêchement, something came up, is the event that broke it.

The verbs that change meaning. A few verbs mean a state in the imparfait and an event in the passé composé, and English translates them with two different words. Savoir: il savait, he knew, but il a su, he found out. Vouloir: il voulait, he wanted, but il a voulu, he tried to, or decided to.

Three shortcuts to avoid

• “Imparfait for long things, passé composé for short things” is wrong often enough to hurt you. Il a vécu dix ans à Paris, he lived ten years in Paris, is passé composé because it is reported as one finished chapter. Length is not the question; the role in the story is.
• “Imparfait means was -ing” catches the interruption pattern and misses the habits and the states. Il mangeait une pomme chaque matin is not “he was eating an apple every morning”; it is “he used to”.
• Time words help but do not decide. Hier, yesterday, usually announces a passé composé, and chaque matin an imparfait, yet hier, il faisait beau is a perfectly good sentence: yesterday is when the scene took place, and the weather is still scenery.

The drill below gives you five sentences and two forms each. You will definitely get the interruptions right after this page; the meaning-change verbs are the ones to watch.

Practice

Pick the past

Each sentence needs one verb in the passé composé or the imparfait. Ask the question first, then choose. Check your answer and read why.

01The film was on, then the phone rang. Which form goes in the blank?

Clue a sonné is the event; the film is what was going on around itJe ___ un film quand le téléphone a sonné.

regardaisai regardé

02Nice weather, and at some point we left. Which form completes the sentence?

Il faisait beau quand nous ___.

partionssommes partis

03He was supposed to come at eight, but something came up. Which form fits the first verb?

Il ___ venir à huit heures, mais il a eu un empêchement.

devaita dû

04Paul thought he knew, and only yesterday did he find out. Which form is right for "find out"?

Paul croyait connaître la vérité, mais il ___ la vérité seulement hier.

savaita su

05An apple, every single morning. Which form describes the habit?

Clue chaque matin · every morningIl ___ une pomme chaque matin.

mangeaita mangé

Start over

See the explained solutions without taking the exercise

1. regardaisThe film is the background the phone call cuts into, so it takes the imparfait, regardais. The interruption, a sonné, is the passé composé.
2. sommes partisFaisait beau is the setting, so leaving is the event that happens inside it, sommes partis in the passé composé. Note the auxiliary, être, because partir is a verb of movement.
3. devaitDevait in the imparfait describes what was expected, a plan hanging in the air. A dû would mean he actually had to, a completed obligation, which is not what the sentence says.
4. a suSavoir changes meaning with the tense. Savait would be "he knew", a state; a su is "he found out", the moment the knowledge arrived. Seulement hier points at that moment.
5. mangeaitChaque matin makes it a habit, and habits in the past take the imparfait, mangeait. A mangé would report one apple on one occasion.

Practise the French past tenses

Keep choosing between the two pasts in Panglotive

Open the French conjugation tree with the imparfait / passé composé node already targeted, and practise the choice on sentences at your level, with the analysis of every verb.